


Dreams

by AsterRoc



Series: Multi-fandom Unreliable Narrators [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterRoc/pseuds/AsterRoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bucky lifts his hands to wipe them over his face, and he sees only the nightmare.  “I held up my hands, and they didn’t look right, they didn’t look like my hands, and there was frost on them, and then on my face…” </i>
</p><p>
  <i>He trails off, much like the dream trailed off into the nothingness that scared him awake. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>Steve’s cold hand shakes him again slightly.  Bucky stares at the hand on his shoulder, the hand pushing him back into the chair.  </i>
</p><p>Maybe pre-war Bucky has nightmares of possible futures.  Or maybe the Winter Soldier has dreams of an impossible life before Hydra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Pax Hydra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2333753) by [emilyenrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/pseuds/emilyenrose). 
  * Inspired by [Where We Lie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/688809) by [Runic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runic/pseuds/Runic). 
  * Inspired by [Toska](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2297888) by [pieandsouffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieandsouffles/pseuds/pieandsouffles). 



> Betaed by the amazing Eustacia Vye.

The noise from the kitchen has been bothering Bucky for a while, stabbing into his splitting head much the same way that the hairpins stabbed into his hand when he brushed the girl’s hair away from her ear to kiss it last night, breathing his alcohol-fogged breath into the lobe.  What was the girl’s name again?  His recollection is derailed by another crash as one dish bangs against another, and Bucky is surprised to realize that the accompanying voice he hears is not Steve cursing at breaking dishes, but humming a tune happily while washing them.  He cracks an eye, and from the angle of sunlight streaming bright yellow through the window realizes it is already early afternoon.

Slipping his legs over the side of the bed isn’t too bad, and he manages to use the wall to lever himself upright and out of bed, but crossing the empty floor takes enough effort that Bucky leans on the door jamb for a good long time recovering, just watching Steve washing the dishes.  Bucky recognizes the tune just before Steve begins to sing the words, and he listens reverently as the song continues.  Steve’s voice is slightly tentative, frequently ducking below the sound of the water and clink of dishes, but there is a richness underlying the sweeter notes.

“ _If happy little bluebirds fly…_ ”

On the last few notes of the song, Steve’s voice cracks, and he drops down an octave.

“ _Beyond the rainbow…_ ”

And Bucky gently eases his own voice in on a high falsetto, harmonizing with Steve.

“ _Why, oh why can’t I?_ ”

Steve turns, one hand holding a dish, the other a sudsy sponge, a large grin on his face.  “I wasn’t sure when you’d be up, you were out late on your date last night.  What was this one’s name anyway?”

And with that, Bucky remembers.  His own lips widen to smile back at Steve, the left side quirking up slightly higher than the right with the irony.

“Dorothy.”

Fade to black.

Except it doesn’t, black is a color, and there is no color.  This is just empty, a void.  He fills the void, as he was trained to do.  (When?  By whom?  He doesn’t know.)

 _Barnes, James Buchanan._  He’s not sure what it means, but he says it like he knows he’s supposed to do.   _Sergeant.  32557038._

He doesn’t actually hear his own voice, but he says it again, even if it’s only in his own head.

 _Barnes, James Buchanan._   _Sergeant.  32557038._

Trying to fill that emptiness which he is drowning in.

_Barnes, James Buchanan._

He doesn’t know if anything is real.

_Sergeant._

He hears some noise, some disturbance.

_32557038._

A voice?  But he’s hallucinated voices before.

 _Barnes, James Buchanan._   _Sergeant._

A door opening.

_32557–_

“Bucky?”

The sound of the voice startles Bucky awake in the dark, arms flailing, his own voice echoing in his ears.  He doesn’t hear Steve’s breath catch in the other bed, but when he feels the cold hand on his shoulder, Bucky knows it must have happened.

“You okay, Buck?” comes Steve’s voice, perpetually caught somewhere between frail and confident.

Bucky realizes he’s sitting up in bed now, and wipes a hand over his face.  “Yeah, I was…  It was another dream.”  His own voice is shaky as he looks at the flaking plaster walls of their tenement.

“Mmm?” Steve prompts.  

The words come out of Bucky before he realizes he is talking.

“It was dark.  No, not dark, more like nothing.  There were little bits of light.  And cold.  I was so cold.  Then I could see, and it was a reflection…  It was my face but not, like I hadn’t shaved in three days, and I hadn’t had my hair cut in a year.”  Bucky doesn’t see Steve’s concerned face looking down at him from where the smaller man sits on the edge of the bed.  Bucky lifts his hands to wipe them over his face, and he sees only the nightmare.  “I held up my hands, and they didn’t look right, they didn’t look like my hands, and there was frost on them, and then on my face…”

He trails off, much like the dream trailed off into the nothingness that scared him awake.

Steve’s cold hand shakes him again slightly.  Bucky stares at the hand on his shoulder, the hand pushing him back into the chair - no, the bed.  So cold, so large.  Steve’s hands never did fit him right.

“Hey,” Steve says softly, “it’s just a dream right?  Try and get some sleep.”

Bucky shakes his head sharply, trying to dispel the images.  He blinks a couple times.

“Dunno if I can.”  But he lies back down obediently, and his eyelids begin to drift shut.  The dark, the emptiness, envelops him, and Bucky jerks awake again, heart thudding in his chest.  “Steve… maybe you could…”  He’s unable to finish the request.

But of course he doesn’t need to, the smaller man always knows.  “Yeah, sure,” Steve says, briefly getting up off the bed, then pulling back the covers and slipping in beside Bucky, his slight body cold next to Bucky’s.  “You know I’m here for you.”

Bucky can feel the soft sleepy smile cross his own face.  “Till the end of the line.”

“Punk.”

“Jerk.”

He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that Steve’s grin would mirror his.

But he does open his eyes, wakefulness always comes no matter how much he might wish otherwise. The sense of comfort fades with the memory of the dream, and he’s back to scrounging for enough calories to sustain his high metabolism another day.  

When he finally decides to come in, it’s not due to the way the Captain has been following him relentlessly across the globe.  It’s not because the Widow has been tracking his movements and feeding that information to the Captain.  And it’s certainly not because the Falcon has been undying in his loyalty, making sure that not only the Captain eats every day, but also the asset as well, routinely cooking more than even one supersoldier can eat and leaving the leftovers on the doorstep for the asset.  No, it’s not any of these things which lead him to finally stop running.

It’s what he sees when he finally lets his eyes slip closed.  It’s what he feels in those interstices between waking, which he can’t properly call sleeping because a tool does not need to sleep.

When everything finally goes not even black in his vision but instead completely blank, what he sees is a hand too large for its small body reaching out to him as he falls.  What he feels is a cool grip anchoring him, holding him back from the precipice, stronger than anything he’s ever felt in his life.  What he hears is a sweet young voice telling him that he is Real, just like the Velveteen Rabbit.

And when he wakes from what wasn’t sleep, what can’t have been a nightmare because assets don’t dream, he knows he must seek out that hand, that grip, that voice.  That it’s the one last thing he will hold onto, until the end of the line.

He holds onto this thought as strongly as he can as his eyes slip closed, until the sounds of footsteps passing his hiding place snap him back into alertness.

“Really, why do we have to do this?”  Bucky drags his feet behind Steve, who marches resolutely, as though he were already part of a regiment.

“What, you don’t think I can do it, punk?” Steve retorts, flipping his hair out of his eyes and straightening his tie as he stands outside the recruiting office.  “You want me to stay home and what, buy war bonds?  With what money?”

Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets and refuses to meet Steve’s eyes.  “I was thinking of collecting scrap metal.”  He hears Steve snort at this, then a scuff of a shoe and a door opening.  Bucky looks up to see Steve’s back as he enters the building.   _Shit_ , he thinks, _that little jerk’s going to get himself killed._  But he pulls out a cigarette and slouches against the wall outside to wait for Steve.

Thirty minutes later Bucky’s seated on the curb when a toe prods him in the kidney.  He turns around to yell at Steve, then seeing the deflated look on his face changes his mind.  “No luck?” he asks gently instead.

Steve snorts, twisting his hands surreptitiously in his pockets.  “They told me to send my friend in.”

Bucky laughs and throws an arm over Steve’s shoulder as they move down the sidewalk.  “Now why would I do that when you’re still here?  You know you need me to take care of you.”  While it’s true, Bucky does take care of Steve, he knows that Steve’s stubborn enough to take care of himself even if Bucky weren’t around.  Bucky on the other hand… He’s so glad they’d never take Steve.  He doesn’t know what he’d do if Steve left him behind.

“Yeah right, jerk,” Steve retorts as they climb the steps outside their brownstone.  “You wouldn't know how to do your own laundry if I went overseas.”

“Punk,” Bucky counters, pulling the mail from their box while Steve catches his breath.  Bills, bills, junk, and _oh shit, that’s really official looking._  Bucky stuffs this last letter into his inner breast pocket while Steve leans against the railing, hoping he didn’t see it.  He can read it later.  If it’s what he fears, he doesn’t want Steve to know.  “C’mon, let’s get you upstairs.  We can start weight training, maybe that’ll get you in shape enough that they’ll take you.”

Bucky slaps an arm on Steve’s back, making the smaller man stagger, and then grasps his thin cold shoulder tightly in his hand as he steers them both up the stairs to their apartment.  

That letter better not be what he fears.  Bucky schools his features and doesn’t let Steve see. He crawls into bed, hiding the letter underneath the thin mattress, and restlessly tries to sleep, hoping that he won’t dream.  

Thankfully he doesn't, but sitting on the bar stool with a strong healthy Steve by his side should have been a dream come true.  Cleaned up and in his dress uniform for a night on the town, Steve is some beautiful poster boy for the Allies, and Bucky doesn’t know whether to hug him in relief, to cry for fear of what will happen to them both, or to shield his eyes from the brightness of this new and improved Steve.

Steve smiles wistfully at him, and Bucky can do nothing but smile back.  Just moments before Steve convinced his “Howling Commandos” to join his mission to take out Hydra.  And now…

“How about you?  You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”  Steve’s mouth twists at the corner, wry.  They both know it’s out of character, not just that Steve is now the stronger of the two, but that Steve would actually ask Bucky to follow him rather than just rushing ahead and expecting Bucky to have his back.

Bucky snorts and takes another sip of his drink.  He needs something to dull the pain.  He needs something to look at other than Steve’s earnest eyes.  “Hell no, that little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight.  I’m following him.”   _His_ Steve, that’s who he’s following.  It’s too intense though, the moment.  Bucky cracks a joke.  “But you’re keeping the outfit, right?”

Thankfully, Steve looks away to his portrait on the tour poster.  Bucky swallows.  “You know what, it’s kinda growing on me.”

Bucky drinks some more.  He would say the rest of the night passes in a blur, but it’s not true, one moment does stand out to him.  The moment the beautiful dame, _Agent_ Peggy Carter, walks in wearing a gorgeous red dress, the only true color in the place, flirts with Steve for five minutes, and then walks back out.  Bucky watches both their eyes watch each other.  Not once does she make eye contact with Bucky.  Not once does she look away from Steve.  She doesn’t have a single drink.  She doesn’t talk to a single person other than Steve.  Even her answers to Bucky’s attempts at flirtation are addressed to Steve.  It seems the only reason she came into the bar whatsoever was to talk to Steve.  And Steve’s eyes too never stray from her.

It’s like a nightmare, but mercifully Bucky coughs himself awake in his narrow bed, barely squeezed in next to Steve's in their back room.  The spasms in his chest drive the terrifying sensation of non-existence from his head before he even manages to catch his breath again.  

That’s how he knows for sure that he’s sick, it’s not the wheezes worse than Steve’s, it’s not the way that Steve’s hands feel so cold against his forehead, that’s normal.  It’s not the perpetual weakness, and it’s not even the nightmares, for he’s been having those for weeks before this cold.  No, it’s that this time when the nightmares come, he cannot remember the least bit about them.

Too bad he hadn’t caught this cold a few weeks sooner, then things might have ended up differently.  But no sense bemoaning what he can’t change.  Better to enjoy these last few weeks while he can and shove the nightmares down to deal with later.  It’s not like he’ll be the only one with bad dreams where he’s going.  To try and distract himself from the memories of dreams, and the incessant tickling in his throat, Bucky focuses on the sounds coming from the kitchen.

When Steve brings him the watery broth, Bucky makes the effort to sit up in bed and blow on it before slowly sipping, but he sags back down under the covers as soon as Steve takes the empty bowl from him once again.

He only realizes he’s drifted off again when he rises gently towards the surface once more, Steve’s soft voice buzzing somewhere outside his head.  “ _…little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace_ ,” Steve is saying.  Bucky knows the next words to come: “ _and the only person who was kind to him at all was the—_ ”

“ _Skin Horse_ ,” Bucky manages in a throaty whisper.  He feels the bed move slightly with a chuckle from Steve.  “You shouldn’t be this close,” Bucky responds to the motion, “I don’t want you getting sick too.”

“Hush, how else will I know if you need something?”  Bucky doesn’t open his eyes, but he knows that if he did Steve’s jaw would be set in stubbornness as he continues, “ _The Skin Horse had lived longer…_ ”

Bucky drifts back into dreams.  First of Steve as the Velveteen Rabbit, ostracized by all the other nursery toys until his Skin Horse Bucky comes along and befriends him.  But then it changes, and it is Bucky who is asking, “ _What is REAL?  Does it hurt?_ ”  His hair grows long rather than falling out, he feels unshaven and shabby, and his joints get loose and are replaced with metal.  Bucky wants to cry at how changed he is from who he once was, but Steve’s steady voice breaks through the dream, buoying him up as Steve always does.

“ _These things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand._ ”

Bucky sighs and scratches at his hair, hanging long around his face like lop rabbit ears.  He thinks it will be a long time before this magic called Real happens to him.  He longs to become Real, to know what it feels like.

* * *

The nightmares don’t stop in Basic, they become worse because now he can put images to his fears.  Bucky’s skill with the rifle on the range singles him out for sniper training.  Deep steady breaths, he anchors himself, roots himself in his feet, waits until he feels the right moment.

On his days off he comes back to the apartment with Steve and they go to the cinema now that he can afford it so readily, watching the cheesy short films encouraging people to support the war effort.  Every bond is a bullet in the barrel of _his_ gun, and he learns not to waste those bonds, hitting his target more times than he misses.

But as his skills improve, Bucky’s dreams transform from himself in danger, to himself protecting others.  Saving Steve from where he’s strapped to a table to be experimented upon, too weak to even lift his head.  Shooting Nazis in the head when they sneak up behind the skinny little punk.  Sent out on secret missions to kill the man providing arms to the enemy attempting to sow chaos throughout the world.

In his dreams, Bucky completes every mission coldly, ruthlessly, without remorse for the lives he’s ended.  When he wakes, Bucky shakes and sometimes vomits, and strives to emulate his dream-self’s detachment.

He doesn’t tell Steve any of this when he tells him he’s shipping out for England with the 107th.  He doesn’t want Steve to know what he’s becoming.

* * *

He is in the middle of punching in his mission’s already bruising face when he wakes up.  He’s so shocked to see the blood running down Steve’s cheek, and he can feel it on his hand as well, that he just freezes.  This is not how things are supposed to be.  He’s supposed to protect Steve from the bullies, not be one of them himself when he just knows Steve can’t fight back.

Then the world spins and Steve is falling beneath him, and he’s hanging from a metal strut by his left arm (something is wrong with his right arm, he’s not sure what), hanging out over some body of water below them.  Steve is falling, getter further away, and it somehow feels familiar.

But he’s with him till the end of the line, and Bucky lets go and falls as well.

He wakes with a cold hand clamped over his mouth, a body on top of his, and he fights to free himself.  He grunts and thrashes his limbs, and finally manages to wriggle his jaw open far enough to bite the hand hard.  His assailant jerks the hand back, leaving the sharp tang of blood in his mouth, and he hears a low hissed “Jesus, Buck!”

He knows that voice, and Bucky blinks his eyes a few times and focuses on Steve’s face before him, Captain America costume on but hood pulled back and draped over his shoulders.  Bucky realizes he’s breathing hard, and Steve’s still sitting on his legs.  As Bucky watches Steve shake his hand, the red tooth marks fade and heal before his eyes.  Bucky twists onto his side and Steve pulls back from him, behind him where Bucky cannot see.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Steve says softly, “you were yelling in your sleep.”  He does not need to say that the mission could have been compromised if they’d been overheard.

Bucky curls tighter to himself.  “Sorry,” he says shortly and softly.  He doesn’t need to tell Steve it was a nightmare, what else could it be?  Bucky keeps his knees to his chest, hiding everything, hiding his pain, his hurt, his reaction to Steve pressed against him.  He feels a sob wanting to escape his chest.  He wants to ask Steve to sleep close to him like they used to do, before, when he had bad dreams.  He just wants to feel something other than the fear and the cold and the nothingness.  Instead he closes his eyes tight and pretends he’s fallen back to sleep.

After a while he hears Steve turn away and settle himself back down as well, pretending to believe Bucky’s ruse.  

He knows that in the morning, he’ll wake as always to a chipper, “Good morning, soldier,” and the voice swims up at him through a haze as he slowly comes around.  “Your mission, should you choose to accept—”

“Oh come now,” a familiar voice interrupts.  “That’s just cruel.”

He blinks the frost off his eyelashes, and the room comes into focus.  The blond man is there as usual, and the asset’s locks on him, the one man he knows he can trust.  He places a warm hand on the asset’s arm.   _Warm?  He’d always been cold before.  And smaller…_

“It’s time for you to help change the world again.”  He shakes off his feelings of unease and focuses on learning his mission parameters.  He can do this.  He always does this.  He protects those entrusted to his care.  He stops those who would harm them.  He stops those who would bring tyranny to the world.  He kills those who must be killed, getting his own hands dirty so that better men than him don’t have to.  And he will do it again – not gladly, but without feeling.

No backup this time, no automatic weapons.  There needs to be no chance of a sign that it was anything but an accident.  The asset trails the arms dealer for three weeks, learning his patterns.  His handler says it’s the longest he’s been out of cryo in decades, but the asset dismisses this and focuses on the mission.

He watches the target’s family, learns the target’s patterns.  He wasn’t told to minimize collateral damage, but the mission parameters allow leeway and he makes that the secondary priority – fewer deaths are easier to explain.  On a Wednesday when the target plans to take his wife to the opera as usual, leaving his son with the butler, he slips a laxative into the driver’s food.  The lack of his usual driver will also make it more believable when the mark drives off the road on his return home, for the target will not refrain from drinking despite driving himself.

While they’re at Lincoln Center the asset slips into the parking garage and locates the car.  He makes sure to wash away the hydrochloric acid so that no trace of tampering remains on the brake lines afterwards.  He makes it to the sharpest turn in the road with plenty of time to spill the oil in the blind spot around the curve.

He hunkers down to wait and ensure that the mission objective is completed.  The arms dealer must die, it is the only way for world peace to be ensured.  If the man’s face is familiar, it can only be because he has seen the face of evil so many times before.  After all, the asset himself is evil.  It is the only explanation for why they keep wiping him.  It is the only explanation for why he doesn’t feel anything when he kills.

He looks forward to the cryo, to the wipe.  Three weeks out is too long.  He has been dreaming.  Nightmares.  He never remembers any of them, he only knows that he wakes shaking, cold, his face wet, and with a deep sense of missing something that he once had.

He falls into the cold, the deep, the dark, frozen so deep in his bones that he can’t even see blackness, just nothing.  He wakes again with dreams fading behind him, only his next target in his mind.  

Through the sights he can see his mission setting up the ambush.  The target moves forward confidently, not bothering to hide himself, knowing that even should he be spotted, he can easily make his goal in time, he can fight his way through to the other side.  The mission does not know he is being watched.

Lying in wait atop the rubble, the sniper’s finger rides the line before shooting, not enough pressure yet to release the bullet, but enough pressure that he’s close to the trigger point and can easily pull the last millimeter when he feels himself slip into the moment.  He is in the zone, entirely focused on the target below him.  He takes a breath, and another, not yet steady enough to be entirely certain of the kill.

With one of his breaths the sights move up two whole fields of view, he sees a black shape moving forward, and he snaps into focus and applies the tiniest bit of additional pressure to the trigger before he even realizes he has taken the shot.  Automatically he pulls back the bolt to release the shell, and is putting in another one and returning his eye to the scope before he thinks about it.

Through the eyepiece, his mission, bedecked in red, white, and blue, watches the Hydra agent fall, then turns and salutes Bucky in thanks.

The sniper does not acknowledge, simply breathes in another steady breath, finger riding the line of pressure.  He knows his mission, there is no need for extraneous emotions.

He did not feel anything as the man died, and he knows he will not feel anything when he completes his next mission, and at the end of the day, he will go to bed and sleep the same way that he always does.

Another night, another nightmare.  The hand shaking his shoulder wakes him up yet again.  

He can hear his cries echoing in their small bedroom.  Steve sits on the edge of Bucky’s bed, pulling his hand back.  His eyebrows are drawn together, and his lips are pursed tightly.  For a few moments Bucky stares uncomprehendingly at the expression (the emotions of the mission are irrelevant to the asset, after all), but when Steve says, “You want to tell me what this is all about already, Buck?” everything snaps into place and the wrinkles of his face come into focus.  Consternation.  Concern.  Worry.

Nobody has ever worried _for_ the asset before, just _about_ him.

No, that was just the nightmare.  He’s in Brooklyn, in the small rundown tenement he shares with Steve, where every night he and Steve lie down in their separate beds on opposite sides of the room, and every night he wakes screaming.

All these nightmares.  He doesn’t know when he last slept a night through.  Worse yet, he keeps waking Steve.

Steve deserves to know why.  And besides, he’s being sent to Basic in less than a week.  Steve should know.

“I’ve been drafted.”

A myriad of expressions flit across Steve’s face.  His eyes open wide in shock.  His lips turn down with envy.  Finally his brows furrow once more in resolution.  

“I’ll enlist.”

This time Steve’s voice is even more resolute, as if all the attempts before were nothing but a lark, as if they had never happened at all, and now it is definite.  Something about Steve’s tone is so certain, so confident, that for a moment Bucky is convinced it will happen.

But then Bucky looks up at all 90 pounds of Steve, frail and so easily broken, staring down at where Bucky still lies in bed.  Looking at him with an earnestness that, if given form, could destroy Hitler over two hundred times all on its own.  But Steve’s internal strength is exactly that: internal, not external.  Bucky might be able to make it back from Europe alive, but there’s no way Steve could, so they’ll never let him go.

“No you won’t.  Jerk.”

A smile flits across Steve’s face.  “Of course I will, who else will take care of you over there?  Punk.”

Bucky reaches out to ruffle Steve’s hair with his left hand, and for a moment it’s all he can do to stare at the limb which is not his own.

A voice jerks him into consciousness, the horror of the foreign limb receding and fading back into dreams.  

“Mission report.”

The images flash through his mind: a two-story house, white with a red roof before he set it on fire, and as the flames burned, the remaining structure blackened from the smoke.  He watched from the tree line as it burned.  Two individuals made it out: an adult woman and a smaller child.  They were slow from the smoke inhalation, so he hadn’t wasted bullets on them.  Bullets are precious, _every bond is a bullet, every bullet is a bond_ …  It’s been too long, the asset’s head is getting cluttered.  Bullets, that’s right, he hadn’t wasted any bullets.  Besides, he would have had to fish the bullets back out to be sure there wasn’t any evidence remaining.

He dragged the bodies back into the fire, then watched until it went out.

“Mission report,” the voice repeats.  The asset looks up at the familiar man giving the orders.  Young, strong, blond, he inspires confidence, and the asset knows this is a man he would follow anywhere.

“All objectives complete.”  He has never made any other mission report than this, and he never will.  He knows this with absolute certainty, regardless of the lack of memories of previous reports.  This is just how the world works.

A warm hand clasps the asset’s shoulder.  “You are changing the world.”

“Is it time to rest now?” the asset meekly requests.

The blond man grins.  “Yes, you’ve earned it.  Now sleep.”

The asset accepts the mouthpiece easily.  He doesn’t remember why it’s necessary, he never remembers any of his wakings, he never remembers any of his dreams, and even as he screams in agony, he forgets why.

**Author's Note:**

> It’s funny, I started writing this Aug 28 2014, when it was still a fan theory with only circumstantial evidence that the Winter Soldier killed Howard and Maria. When I came back to this in 2016 after _Cap 3_ , I realized that that scene would no longer be the bombshell it would’ve been then, so it needed to be moved to not be anticlimactic, and to allow a different scene to pack its punch. 
> 
> This was really hard for me to write, especially the non-linear nature of it. I had all these scenes in my head, and I didn’t know what to do with them. When I first wrote it, I even put the scenes on index cards and tried shuffling them around multiple times. Then I pasted them all into a Google Doc. The breakthrough came when I realized that there were essentially three timelines: before they go to war, during the war and _Cap 1_ , and once Bucky becomes the Winter Soldier. Originally I was going to have an additional timeline of recovery after _Cap 2_ , but then I remembered how much more I love hurt than comfort. ;) 
> 
> Some of my notes to myself upon the ordering process:
>
>> I want these three times to intertwine, so that it’s not clear which is “now” and whether Bucky’s having flashbacks or nightmares of possible futures. I want this to be heart-wrenching. I want Bucky to wake from the beautiful scene singing in the kitchen with Steve into the middle of torture. I want the asset to wake in a cold sweat because he’s picturing a normal life and it’s terrifying. I want a sweet young Bucky on his knees praying he didn’t just burn a family to death, praying to wake up. 
> 
> Final arrangement is detailed below. In sum, the Pre scenes are going forwards and are weighted towards the start of full work, the Hydra scenes are going backwards and are weighted towards the end, and the WW2 scenes are heaviest in the middle and aren’t in a strict order.
>
>> Pre I – Steve washing dishes and singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
>> 
>> WW2 II – Bucky on Zola’s table chanting his number and Steve saves him
>> 
>> Pre II – Bucky describes cryochamber dream
>> 
>> Hydra IV – The asset comes in
>> 
>> Pre III – Steve tries to enlist and Bucky finds draft notice
>> 
>> WW2 III – Bar scene with Steve/Bucky/Peggy
>> 
>> Pre IV – Bucky sick and Velveteen Rabbit
>> 
>> \---
>> 
>> WW2 I – Sniper training in Basic
>> 
>> \----
>> 
>> Hydra III – Cap 2 helicarrier fight scene
>> 
>> WW2 IV – On a mission, Steve keeping Bucky quiet during a nightmare
>> 
>> Hydra II – Killing Howard and Maria Stark
>> 
>> WW2 V – Bucky robotically sniping Hydra to protect Steve
>> 
>> Pre V – Bucky drafted revelation
>> 
>> Hydra I – WS burned a family & mission report w/ Pierce
> 
> Sources and inspiration include:
> 
>   * [Comic scan](https://asterroc.tumblr.com/post/146812630336/thegeminisage-ive-seen-lots-of-folks-using-32557) of Bucky on Zola’s table reciting his number
>   * While I didn’t use [this prompt](http://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/96012191222/he-was-already-dead-when-i-walked-though-the-door), it gave me some of the feel I was going for with the Winter Soldier. 
>   * [Some meta](http://potofsoup.tumblr.com/post/90141412397/archeralli-a-weak-and-tortured-bucky-making) that helped me think about connections between pre-war Bucky and Hydra’s Winter Soldier
>   * Full text of [The Velveteen Rabbit](http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html) by Margery Williams with illustrations by William Nicholson
>   * [Somewhere Over the Rainbow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U016JWYUDdQ) as originally sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939)
>   * And also the numerous AO3 fics listed previously. 
> 



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